My Way Home is Through You
by ambiguousArchetype
Summary: "You're right. A snake that can talk tells me it's a dragon and that's what I can't believe." Ling smiles and something otherworldly flickers in his thin eyes. "Actually, I'm a god." Lan Fan presses her lips together. "Of course you are." God!Ling and Mortal!Lan Fan in the modern world for Lingfan Week 2018 Day 4: Alternate Universe
1. Chapter 1

**TIP: translations in Author's Notes at the end**

If the snake in the weeds hadn't turned its gleaming golden eyes on her, Lan Fan wouldn't have noticed it at all.

At least, until it starts talking to her.

"Hey. Hey! Miss!"

Lan Fan whirls around, eyes blazing. There is no one there, nothing but the tall grass and an empty road. Behind her, the lights of the city tower above the golden, cloudy sunset.

One hand grips the baton hooked into her belt.

"Miss! Down here!"

The voice comes dry and clear from her left, in the weeds off the path, and that is where Lan Fan looks. And stares.

"Hello!" says the snake, the yellow diamond pattern on its back still bright in the last rays of the sun. "I don't mean to scare you, but could you help me? My tail is bleeding rather a lot, and I don't have enough p—energy to take care of it myself." It—he? It sounds like a he—inches closer. "Are you alright, miss?"

All the breath rushes out of her body, and Lan Fan doesn't know she's drawn her baton until the snake recoils from the tip. "Whoa, whoa! Lady, calm down! I'm not trying to hurt you!"

"I have a name!" Lan Fan snaps, before she remembers she's talking to a _snake_.

Said snake makes a noise that sounds awfully like a laugh. "Okay. Just please, put the baton away. I don't bite."

Lan Fan scoffs, but her arm falls numbly to her side. She is dreaming. She has to be. It wouldn't be the first time she's fallen asleep on the subway. Perhaps the exhaustion's got to her, and she is hallucinating. Tucking her baton away, she closes her eyes and pinches her thigh, hard.

When she opens them again, the snake tilts its head and asks, "So what is your name, then?"

Definitely hallucinating. "Lan Fan Sheng."

"So, Lan Fan Sheng, about the tail." The snake slithers out from the weeds, and she can finally see the red gash in his side, fresh and oozing blood. Despite her shock, some lingering, phantom feeling in her shoulder aches at the sight.

"The subway line here just closed, and all the animal clinics are in the city." Lan Fan shakes her head. "I'm no veterinarian. I can't help you."

"I don't need a clinic. Just some bandages." The snake eyes her bound hands, raw from rope and endless scrubbing. "And I'm willing to bet you have some of those, miss Lan Fan."

Lan Fan looks around. The settling twilight casts a muted, plum glow over the skyline. The road to the village is dark, a phantom breeze brushing through the grass. Sounds are strange: a car honk, the chirp of a cricket, a bird call that is distant and long and eerie in the cloudless evening. There isn't a person in sight, in this hazy, dream-world she's entered. Just her, and the polite, bleeding snake that's staring at her with eyes like the sun.

"All right." She adjusts the strap of her bag and leans down, easing her hands beneath the snake's thick body and lifting him up. He is oddly warm in her arms. "I'll help you."

* * *

The snake sleeps for a week.

She wakes up one morning to an ache in her back and her serpent tenant's head inches away from her face. "Good morning!"

She screams, but the sound comes out more like a loud croak.

"What? Forgot I could talk?" He shifts in his seat on the rickety table, the equivalent of a grin on his scaly face. "You look exhausted."

"Do I?" Shaking off her surprise, Lan Fan stands and stretches, lifting her left arm up and rotating it gently in the socket. "You should be well rested, at least. You were dead to the world for almost eight days."

"Not true. I woke up every day, and you were gone. Sometimes I was awake when you came back, and you never noticed because you were dead on your feet." The snake follows her with his yellow eyes as she moves to the small bathroom. "How long do you work?"

"Long enough to keep this place from falling apart." She washes her face and brushes her teeth, pulling her hair up into a loose bun as she walks back out towards him. "So let's make this quick. Show me your wound."

"Don't change the subject." He looks up at Lan Fan with his glaring eyes. "You don't look old enough to be out of college, let alone working a full-time job. What do you do all day? Bus tables?"

"That's none of your business." She's starting to get annoyed. "The deal was I bring you home and bandage you up. I don't have to let you stay here and question my life choices."

"Whoa, okay. My bad." The snake tenses when she begins to unwrap the bindings. "Do you have family? Someone that stays with you?"

Some of the fight has left her, and she feels herself deflate at his question. "No."

"Oh." He is quiet, and a part of Lan Fan wants to laugh at the idea that this talking, impossible snake might pity her. She doesn't. She can't bring herself to care about it like she used to. She's dealt with enough pity from strangers before.

The bandages fall away, and she gapes at the cut that is now half as small and looking more like an old scar than a new wound. The snake twists his head back, and sighs. "That's good. I was a little worried those old bandages you had might make it worse, but it's healing rather well."

"Healing? It _is_ healed." Lan Fan doesn't know why she's surprised; a snake that can talk might as well have accelerated healing, too. "Did you even need bandages?"

"Well, yeah. They do help, you know." The snake yawns, his tiny fangs shining. "Thank you for them, by the way. If you work minimum wage, and considering you look around my age I'm assuming you do, you must be working multiple shifts a day, and it probably isn't just waitressing."

She's too stunned to argue. "Retail, maintenance, anything that pays. What do you mean I'm around your age? How old are you?"

"Oh, a lot older than I look." He uncoils himself and slips down to the floor. "Well then, miss Lan Fan, seeing as I'm basically healed if you would kindly open the door I'll get out of your way."

Lan Fan says, "That could still get infected, if you're not careful," and blinks, wondering why the hell she even still cared.

The snake looks pleased. "Oh, don't you worry about me. Besides, if I'm going to repay you for saving me, I'd better start now. There's a lot of work to do."

Unbidden, her door swings open, and the snake slithers out, dry leaves cracking beneath his tail. There's a pressing urgency in the back of Lan Fan's mind, pulling and nagging that something's missing, that she's forgotten something. Like yesterday, the air is strange and still, and she feels numb as she steps outside. The sky is a rosy gray, and petrichor fills her nose. Across the yard, beneath a dying sapling, is the snake, his eyes glinting flecks of gold through the space between them, as though he is waiting for her.

She exhales. "What's yours, then?"

"My what?"

"I told you my name when you asked, that day." The silence stretches. "What's yours?"

In between one blink and the next, the snake is gone, and the air is filled suddenly with sound and fire and gold. Lan Fan shields her eyes and bows her head, her hair whipping free of the elastic, and it seems like a long time before she can begin to think.

The wind dies, and the roaring fades, and she straightens, opens her eyes. A great, serpentine face stares back at her, a thick mane of black hair and two long whiskers swaying in an unknown breeze. In the small yard, the dragon's body bends and twists, graceful and awkward all at once. Its feet are tucked near its body, but the long, sharp claws still graze the cobblestone. The golden scales of its face continue down the length of its body, and glittering night-black scales cut diamond patterns in the gleaming yellow. A pair of ivory horns protrude from its head, and Lan Fan can see a red glow emanating from its mouth, the source of the heat. Large, blinding gold eyes stare into hers. She has never been so frightened.

"So you're just a typical, fire-breathing dragon, then." In the invisible current, she hears something like a laugh. The dragon shifts, and she sees the long, pink wound stretched across the lower part of its body. Some of the tension leaves her. "What is your name?"

A gust of warm breath wraps around her, and high in the air the wind brings her an echoing reply. _Ling Yao._

The dragon turns its head up and shoots into the sky, a blur of gold and black and then empty space. Lan Fan pushes her wind-blown hair out of her face and watches it ripple farther and farther away until it disappears into the lightening dusk.

She calls in sick and stays in bed for the rest of the day.

* * *

"Hey! Miss!"

Lan Fan turns around, hand on her baton and glaring daggers, and the young man in what looks like early Chinese imperial robes behind her yelps. "Whoa, okay! Sorry! Don't hit me with your baton!"

She's more confused than annoyed now, because he knew she had a baton and he called her 'miss' and _she's heard that voice before_. "Who are you?"

"If you have to ask, don't you already know?" When Lan Fan scowls and pulls out her baton, the man relents. "Okay, okay. I'm Ling."

Her heartbeat falters, for a second. "Do I know you?"

"Come on." He sighs. "Yellow diamond pattern, gold eyes, devilishly handsome face, talking snake. Any of this you remember?" He gestures at his back. "You stopped me from bleeding out on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere?"

Talking snake. She snaps her baton back into her belt. The light is green, and her fingers curl. She doesn't wait for him as she strides across the street, narrowly avoiding a turning taxi. The street is packed in the middle of the day, and she needs to think. After the dragon had left, she'd used various excuses to explain the noise and the charred bushes to her landlady, who'd accepted it with much more ease than Lan Fan had expected. It helped that she lived in the outskirts of a small village, and there was no one awake that day to see what had happened. She still can't really believe it _had_ happened; a snake had talked to her, and lived with her, and turned into a dragon in her yard.

And now, more than a month later, this man, this _boy_ really—he looks only a few years older than her, tells her in broad daylight with countless ears listening that he is that snake she saved. And dressed as he is. If Grandfather could see it… She shakes her head. It is a scene right out of his stories. When Lan Fan glances back over her shoulder there is no sign of the boy. But she feels it now as she did then: those golden eyes that watched her and waited in the grass. And when she finally stops in a side road, away from the crowd, he's there still, leaning against the stone.

"You remember me. I can see it."

"Because you know me so well?"

He cocks his head. "I mean, it would be hard to forget a talking snake."

"Talking snake. That's funny, all I can remember is a giant dragon in my front yard."

The boy—Ling—has the decency to look sheepish. "Okay, I'll admit. That was a bit much. I didn't know what I was supposed to do."

She throws her hands up. "Some warning would've been nice! You just went and turned into a huge serpent without saying anything!"

"I didn't think you would believe me."

"You're right. A snake that can talk tells me it's a dragon and _that's_ what I can't believe."

He smiles and something otherworldly flickers in his thin eyes. "Actually, I'm a god."

Lan Fan presses her lips together. "Of course you are."

"No, really." Ling lifts his arms and indicates the rich fabric draping off of him. "Do you think I'd claim to be a talking snake and dress like this if I wasn't one?"

"If you were clinically insane and afflicted with delusions of grandeur, you would."

"Yes, but how many clinically insane people know for a fact that you've healed a talking snake with gorgeous golden eyes and who turned out to be a fire-breathing dragon?"

"So you're a good guesser."

Ling grins wider, and for a second a small part of Lan Fan wants to smile back. "You're right. I don't know you, but I can see it in your eyes. Everything I've said, it makes sense to you. Whether you want to or not, you believe me." He leans closer to her, and she can see flecks of those gold snake eyes in the dark brown of his. "Besides, you're the one talking to snakes and seeing dragons in your yard. So really, which of us is the crazy one?"

They stand there, in a small road off that is utterly, oddly deserted despite the noon city bustle. A girl and a god. And Lan Fan may later prove to be totally insane, but right now... She believes him.

"So. You're healed. Why did you come back?"

He shrugs. "You saved me. I told you I'd repay you, didn't I? And speaking of, busing tables and cleaning windows is one thing, I didn't know you sang at weddings, too!"

She doesn't even bother asking how he found out. "It's easy money. And it's a lot better than waitressing, but wedding jobs are thin on the ground. It's too little to live on."

"Well. You're my savior. I can't have you struggling to make ends meet." Ling blocks the sun with his hand and squints into the distance. "Right on time."

Lan Fan turns to see where he's looking. A few buildings down, a woman in a long, sleeveless white top is walking away from them, hefting at least a dozen grocery bags in both arms. From what Lan Fan can tell, the woman's skin is tan, tanner even than her grandfather's had been, and her hair is in box braids. A foreigner, then.

Ling juts his chin out in the woman's direction, and Lan Fan glowers. "I'm not going to just follow some random woman."

"Just look." At his urging, Lan Fan turns back around. From an alley between two buildings, two heavyset men eye each other and begin trailing the woman. One man reaches for something in his pocket, and even from here Lan Fan can see the glint of a blade. Instinctively, she reaches for her baton, but her fingers meet only leather and fabric. When she whips her head around, Ling is already gone.

Cursing him in her head, she turns back to see one of the men lunge for the woman. Quicker than Lan Fan can process, the woman whirls and smacks him in the face with a shopping bag, her face tight and controlled. Before the man can recover, she crouches and sweeps his legs out from under him, letting his head slam onto the pavement below.

The second man has been hanging back, watching and calculating the woman's moves. Her back is to him when he finally lifts out a gun from his pocket and points it at her. "Don't move, bitch, or I'll shoot."

That's all he gets out before Lan Fan leaps and kicks the gun out of his hand. It clatters to the floor, and she kicks it out of reach of his recovering companion even as the woman restrains him. The second man is faster than the first, and in her distraction Lan Fan narrowly dodges a fist to her temple. When the second punch comes at her, she blocks it with her arm, grabs his wrist, and pulls as she twists it inwards. With the lingering momentum, she pushes her back into his chest and flips him over her good shoulder, sending him crashing down onto the road. Twisting him onto his front, she bends his arm in towards his back and puts her body weight on his legs.

The man cries out in pain, and she snaps, "Shut up, or I'll knock you out."

"Do it anyway." The woman says in fluent Chinese as she stands up, her victim already out cold. "They can rot here until the police find them."

Lan Fan shrugs, and strikes the back of his neck. The man goes slack in her grip. Standing up, she wipes her hands on her shirt and picks up a discarded grocery bag. "I saw them following you and came to help, but you were doing pretty well on your own. Here."

"I appreciate it." The woman takes the bag from her and studies her for a moment. Her gaze is sharp and intimidating, and Lan Fan starts to feel a bit like she's being dissected. "What's your name? How did you learn how to fight like that?"

"Lan Fan. My grandfather taught me since I was a kid."

"Do you know any other martial arts? Jiu-jitsu or _tàijíquán_?"

"Yes, and _shàolín_ kung fu, taekwondo, _bāguàzh_ _ǎ_ _ng_ , _xíngyìquán,_ judo. Some aikido." Lan Fan rubs her neck, uncomfortable. "My grandfather used to train soldiers."

"Perfect." The woman grinned. "I'm Izumi Curtis. I run a self-defense studio just down the street. It pays more than waitressing, and I could use another teacher there, if you're interested."

Lan Fan doesn't think she's ever agreed to anything so fast in her life.

* * *

As it turns out, her new boss is half Chinese, and she and her husband Sig had moved to China to open a martial arts studio and start a family. While she runs her studio, Sig owns a meat shop beneath their apartment, and sometimes during Lan Fan's lunch break he cooks the juiciest pieces of pork neck for her. Lan Fan likes them far more than she ever thought she would.

One day, Izumi shows her a picture of her students in Germany, where she used to live. Two boys grin at the camera, yellow-haired and fair-skinned and obviously siblings. But what catches Lan Fan's attention are their eyes; a light, burnished amber that is so very nearly gold.

"Edward must be around your age, now." Izumi points at the shorter, angrier looking one. "His younger brother's name is Alphonse. They were so impatient when they first came to me. Too much energy and no outlet." She laughs. "You'd have given the both of them a run for their money."

Lan Fan smiles, but the gold lingers in her mind. When she'd gone home that day, with her new job and a new feeling of contentment in her stomach, she found her baton on her doorstep with a note. The writing on it was a loopy, careless scrawl that read: _Don't say I never gave you anything. I'll be back._

She had been exasperated, mostly. He was a god, and she'd saved him, and he'd repaid her by helping her get that job. So why would he come back? She isn't interesting, can't possibly be of any interest or use to a deity that can transform into anything, or go anywhere he wants. But it's been almost two months now, and there is no sign of the young immortal she brought home with her, and she's sure he's forgotten her.

She doesn't mind. He'd meddled in her life far more than she needed, and she's glad. But there's a hollowness in her chest that she can't shake, and she knows it, had felt it for years after her grandfather had died. But Lan Fan had lived with Fu her whole life, and she is used to being alone. She doesn't know why this god's sudden intrusion and absence from her life makes her feel that loneliness so potently.

"Ha! I finally got you!" Paninya grins above her, her arms pinning Lan Fan's own down. "I didn't think it'd take such little time!"

Paninya, too, is someone Lan Fan didn't think she'd like as much as she does. A Nigerian exchange student, she'd stumbled into the studio one day and Izumi had given her to Lan Fan almost immediately. Paninya was funny, cheerful, and had proven herself horrible at Lan Fan's native tongue, so she and Lan Fan talked in a mix of English and Chinese. She was not nearly as bad at jiu-jitsu, despite both of her prosthetic legs, and takes all of Lan Fan's firm criticism of her spontaneity in stride. It's that impulsivity that had helped her overpower Lan Fan, but just a bit. Lan Fan's mind had been elsewhere, and she tells Paninya as much.

"Okay, sure. If that makes you feel better."

Lan Fan refocuses. In two moves, Paninya is tumbling to the ground and yielding. "Agh! Okay! I knew it couldn't have been that easy. You were distracted."

"It won't happen again." Pulling her up, Lan Fan salutes and bows. "Your time's up. You know how to get back to your dorm, right? Don't take the wrong line again."

"It was one time. You can stop bringing it up." Grabbing her bag, Paninya nudges her as she bends down to change her shoes. "Come on. You promised to get boba with me."

Lan Fan grimaces. "Sorry. I'm late on rent, and my landlady leaves at five. Rain check?"

"Fine. Only because you kind of let me beat you today." With a last wave, Paninya shouts a goodbye to Izumi before slipping out the door.

After Lan Fan has changed and slipped on her shoes, Izumi makes her way over. "Lan Fan. Sig and I will be out of town the rest of the month. I'm closing the studio while we're gone, so you don't have to come in. You'll get this week's pay, and paychecks for the weeks we're not here."

Lan Fan is speechless. "Izumi, if I'm not working you don't have to—"

"You're a good instructor, and you work hard." Izumi smiles and walks away, yelling over her shoulder, "Relax for a few days. You deserve a vacation."

Lan Fan is still reeling over Izumi's generosity when she turns a corner and runs right into someone's arms. "Oh, I'm sorry."

"I know I've been gone a few weeks but still. There's no need to run at me like that, Lan Fan."

The ache in her chest eases. Lan Fan steps away and stares as Ling grins back at her. He is still in the ridiculous, glistening robes he'd worn last time. His hair isn't tucked into a tasseled cap like it had been, but is half up in a knot adorned with silver ornaments. The rest flows down his back like a black cape. Somehow, Lan Fan thinks he looks younger.

"I could throttle you for stealing my baton." Her voice is breathy, despite the threat.

"But in return you got a wonderful job that you actually enjoy, no?" Ling appraises her. "And from the way you took down that huge man, do you really even need it?"

"Yes." Lan Fan gestures at her limp left arm. "I can't exactly flip people over my shoulder all the time."

Ling clicks his tongue as he takes her arm into his hands, and Lan Fan is suddenly very aware of everywhere he touches. "I noticed you favored your left side. How did this happen?"

"Again with the twenty questions." Looking around, she tugs her arm out of his grasp and starts down the street. The sun is setting, and the air is as still and strange as it had been the night they met. But now she knows why. "There was an accident when I was younger. I haven't been able to use my left arm fully since." Passerby stare at the boy next to her, and she looks at him. "I think I preferred you as a snake. Why do you always wear clothes that look straight out of a period drama?"

Ling laughs. It's a deep, bellowing noise, and, like his smile, Lan Fan has to stop herself from joining in. "I know it's extravagant. It's also magical, so I can't just snap my fingers and change into something less conspicuous. And I don't think you'll ever want to talk to me again if I just started stripping in the street."

"I don't want to talk to you dressed like this, either."

"Lies. You always want to talk to me." Ling turns her down a small path into a small park. At rush hour, the park is near empty, and the small paths wind behind outcroppings and bushes. The dying light casts the trees in shadow, and in the dimness Lan Fan can just barely make out his face. "And you must have a lot of questions."

Lan Fan opens and closes her mouth. He's not wrong. Too many times she'd gone home and sprawled on her bed and thought about what she would ask him, if he came back, and too many times she'd wondered why she wanted to know. "I don't know. You might be offended."

Ling laughs that bellowing laugh again. "Trust me, if I was going to smite you for insolence I would've done it when you pointed that baton at me. And good thing I didn't, or else I would've bled out and died a horrible death in the mortal realm without ever seeing you smile." He grins as warmth floods her face. "I still have yet to see it."

Lan Fan ignores him. "You said you're a god. Of the Chinese folk gods? You don't seem like you're anywhere close to reaching Nirvana."

He rubs his ears. "Old timey traditional folk, thank goodness. Have you seen the earlobes on those Buddha statues?"

"So your king—"

"Which one?" Ling smiles. "There are so many."

She rolls her eyes. "The main one. The final boss. The head honcho."

"The _head honcho_ —?"

" _Tiāndì_ ," snaps Lan Fan. "You know what I mean."

"Okay, okay." Ling straightens his expression. "Continue. What about _el jefe_?"

"The king of the Heavens. He's God, then? Or is it blasphemous to even compare him to the whole Christian trinity doctrine?" She squints at him. "Should I even be talking to you about other religions?"

Ling laughs again. She is starting to get used to the deep bellow of it. "No, it's alright. We're more or less the Greek pantheon meets Hinduism, if that had a few thousand more deities with far less children. A lot of us don't have set names, and a lot more don't even have set identities." He scratches his chin. "In some legends, my aunt and my grandmother are the same entity."

Lan Fan raises her eyebrows. "My heart bleeds."

The god _sticks out his tongue_ at her. "We may be a pantheistic mess, but we keep to ourselves, mostly. We don't care about offerings or temples. We just exist."

"How considerate of you." She bites her lip. "So…who are you, then? You can't be too important if you spend all your time hanging around us poor mortals."

Ling doesn't say anything, but the look in his eyes gives Lan Fan the impression that he dearly wants to laugh. That's good. She needs to watch her tone, from now on. "Important depends. I'm not, really, but they will come looking if I don't return when I'm supposed to."

"And when do you have to?" Seeing his glee, Lan Fan adds, "I need to plan ahead, if you're just going to show up and start dragging me around the city. I don't have the bus fare to indulge you."

"Who said anything about taking the bus? What about old-fashioned walking?" The god pushes up the sleeves of his robes. "I could even _fly_ you places."

She eyes his trailing hem, the sparkling pins, and thinks of the dragon. "I'll pass."

Ling shrugs. "As for who I am, you can pick and choose. Most people call me _huángdì_ , or _huángshén_. _Xuānyuán huángdì_ is a bit much, honestly, but. There you go."

Lan Fan thinks she might hit him. "'Not really important'? You're _wǔfāng tiānshén_ and you're 'not really important'? Who _is_ important then? _Nǚwā?_ "

"No. Well, yes. She is, and frankly she never shuts up about it, but." Ling—the damn _Yellow Emperor God_ —raises his hands. "Look, I told you because I didn't even think you actually knew who he—I was."

She curls her fingers into fists. It won't do her any good to hit a god. It will do her even worse to hit a god like _him_. "My grandfather didn't practice, but he told me a lot about the traditional gods. He told me _huángdì_ was basically the ancestor of all Han Chinese, and you have the audacity to say you _aren't important_."

"Okay, yes, he is rather important, but the thing is, I'm not him _._ " He rubs his head. "Names like _huángdì_ , and _nǚwā_ , they're just _names_. Titles, to be passed down once the next one is born. So _huángdì_ , the one in all the stories, the one your grandfather told you about, he's not me." Ling cracks a smile. "I'm like his understudy. An intern, if you will."

Lan Fan runs her hand down her face. The lights in the park turn on, all at once, and suddenly they're bathed in a warm, golden light. When she looks at Ling, there is a soft sort of wonder in his gaze. She clears her throat. "So, what? Is there a _tiāndì_ -in-training somewhere as well?"

"No." He chuckles. "That's actually determined the old-fashioned way. Royal blood is thicker than holy water."

"You know the saying actually means the opposite of what you're trying to say."

Ling waves his hand. "The problem is, old _tiāndì_ had a lot of children. And the competition was brutal. Some were lucky to survive past a few centuries, and even then they were constantly in danger." He looks darkly at the sky, and even with the coming nightfall Lan Fan can see that something in his face has changed. "Most dropped out of the running altogether. In fact, there's only one prince left now."

"How do you drop out of the running? If your dad is the king of the Heavens, don't you have to stay a prince or princess?"

He looks back at Lan Fan, and the light is back in his eyes. "Nah, it doesn't work quite like that. When gods are born, they're born a certain deity. It doesn't matter if your parents are wind gods; if you're born a fox god you are a fox god. Usually, the children don't have a choice who they become, which shoes they fill. But if you're the child of _tiāndì_ , you can either vie for the throne or choose to accept the godly title that is yours by birthright." He smirks. "The rising _nǚwā_ is a princess of the Heavens."

In the beat of silence, Lan Fan fights for something to say. "Why are you telling me all this?"

Somewhere in the distance, there is a rumble of thunder. Immediately, Ling's head whips up, and he stares intently at the flashes of lightning above the trade center tower. Before she can think anything of it, he gestures at her wrist. "What time is it? I heard you had to get back before five?"

Puzzled, she pulls out her phone. It's an old, cracked thing, a Nokia flip phone her grandfather had used. The time tells her she has ten minutes before the last train to her station leaves, and she starts. How long has she been standing here, in a dark, deserted park, talking to a god about pantheons and bloodlines?

"I have to go." She glances at the roiling thunder, and she thinks she knows why suddenly this god in front of her, _xuānyuán huángdì_ , looks so frightened. "They're calling you."

"Don't worry about it." Ling smiles, but his own worry doesn't leave his eyes. "Here, I'll give you a head start on your deadline."

He snaps his fingers, and the sound echoes in her head. Lan Fan blinks. She's standing in front of the subway station, her phone in her hand and her stomach tumbling into her throat. Next to her, a man on his phone gapes at her as she grabs the side of the wall and tries not to throw up. She thinks she would prefer flying to this.

Thunder rumbles again, this time overhead, and she looks up at the clouds and tastes metal in her throat. As the first drop of rain hits her face, her left shoulder begins to ache.

* * *

 **A/N:** This was exactly what it sounded like.

 **TRANSLATIONS:**  
Tàijíquán = Tai chi, a popular Chinese martial art  
Shàolín = Shaolin (kung fu style)  
Bāguàzhǎng = Eight Trigam Palms, a popular Chinese martial art  
Xíngyìquán = Shape-Will Fist, a popular Chinese martial art  
Tiāndì = God/Emperor/Ruler of Heaven  
Huángdì/Huángshén/Xuānyuán huángdì = Yellow Emperor/Deity, one of the Five Heavenly Deities and represents earth. Is considered to be the progenitor of all Han Chinese people  
Wǔfāng tiānshén = Five Deities/Heavenly Deities, the five manifestations of Heaven  
Nǚwā = Mother Goddess, associated with the creation of mankind and mending the world order

This story uses my own personal interpretation of the traditional Chinese gods. While the names of the gods and their specific roles listed above are actual Chinese gods, this work is in no way factual in its depictions of Chinese "Heaven" and its inner workings. As this AU was slightly based off of the Chinese novel 三生三世十里桃花 (To The Sky Kingdom) by Tang Qi (and yes I am aware of the scandal behind that story, let me enjoy my trash), I brought elements from the Nine Heavens depicted in that story and mixed it with my own ideas.

This wasn't meant to be a three-part story* (whoops), but there were too many things I wanted to add to the plot and too little time to finish it by today. So here we are.

Also on AO3 (my name there is wild_and_free). Part Two will be up soon.

*Looks like it's three parts now. Yikes™


	2. Chapter 2

**TIP: Translations in Author's Notes at the end**

The next time she sees him is during her lunch break. The day after Izumi and Sig leave, Lan Fan gets a wedding job, and she sings at a venue close to the river. After, she spends most of the reception near the side of the room, talking to a few of the bride's older relatives.

"Such a beautiful voice!" A lady trills. "And so young! Why don't your parents send you to school?"

"Oh, my grandson attends a nice college near here. Fudan University." Another old man smiles at her. "You look about his age."

Lan Fan nods and answers politely, but something in her heart clenches, hearing these people talk about their grandchildren. Fu had wanted to continue her schooling, had been putting aside money before he got sick. She remembers how all that money went into paying the bills that kept coming in even after he couldn't be saved.

Hours later, she sits on the Bund, a sandwich and drink from the store on the corner in her hands. She's throwing crumbs at the growing number of pigeons in front of her when someone sits down beside her. And Lan Fan doesn't know she's been expecting Ling until she sees a strange girl next to her instead of him, and the shock hits her in the gut.

Which is ridiculous. He had been gone for months before. She shouldn't expect him to show up only three days after she saw him last. She shouldn't expect him to show up at all, but. Lan Fan shakes her head. Since that day he'd called out to her on the busy street at noon, for some reason she's started to look for the god that she healed. It isn't right.

"And here I thought I was special. Turns out you help every ratty animal you come across."

"You weren't really an animal," Lan Fan retorts, before she hears what the girl had said. And jerks her head up to stare.

The girl smiles, a familiar smile in a stranger's face, and waves. "Yes, it's me. Tell me, are these 'bras' supposed to be this tight? I feel like I'm being given the Heimlich."

Lan Fan chooses not to argue. "Is this going to be a recurring thing? In Norse mythology Loki sometimes appeared as a girl as well."

"Do you have a problem with it?"

"No." She shrugs. "It'd just be nice to know if I should expect random strangers to come up to me and talk about gods and monsters."

The girl laughs, high and clear, and it's so different from Ling's that Lan Fan starts. "No. But I just met with _el jefe_ , and I didn't want to show up in fancy robes again, lest you actually stop talking to me." He—she?—points at Lan Fan's head. "Your hair is down."

It drapes around her shoulders like a thick, annoying curtain. Lan Fan tugs at a lock. "Only for special occasions."

"That's a shame. It looks real nice." Ling brushes off his skirt.

In her mind, Lan Fan finds herself contrasting this girl's features to Ling's. Compared to her wide face, the god's face had been longer, more angular, with high cheekbones and a strong chin. His current nose is small and slightly hooked as opposed to his original, which had been straighter, regal. Only the girl's thin, made-up eyes look remotely like Ling's own. Lan Fan looks quickly away, startled. They had only met in person twice before this, and both times only briefly. She wonders how she'd started remembering things like the shape of Ling's face.

The god breaks through her thoughts. "Sorry about last time, by the way. You were going to be late, and I didn't have time to fly you to the station."

"Oh." Lan Fan remembers the lightning, and the almost-fear in his eyes. "They came looking for you."

Ling grimaces. "Something like that."

She raises an eyebrow, but doesn't inquire further. "You didn't answer my question before you bolted. Why did you tell me all of that?"

He smirks at her. "You asked, remember?"

"You didn't have to answer." Lan Fan tosses another piece of bread. "Especially since everything you told me was so…" Personal? Political?

"Complicated?" He waves his hand. "It's fine. I owed it to you, after I did all that snooping into your history."

Lan Fan turns to look at him. "What?"

Ling sits up, suddenly, and exhales. Almost as though he expected this. "In the Heavens, _huángdì,_ _nǚwā_ , and a few other deities are partly in charge of the Temple of Souls, where every mortal's past is held. We can't see anyone's future, nor can we change it. We just watch over them, and as people live out their lives their stories grow and expand and intertwine. Until they die." He takes her drink and fiddles with the plastic cover. "After you helped me heal, I went back and…and looked through your life path, trying to figure out how I could repay you." He meets her eyes. "Then I found out about your parents. Your grandfather."

Ah. Despite the sun, she's chilly, even as she holds back a scoff. What was it about people today and bringing up her family? "So. You've unlocked my tragic backstory. Only, I guess it wasn't really locked."

Her voice isn't angry, but Ling flinches nonetheless. "I'm sorry. I know it was an invasion of privacy. I just wanted to figure out how to go about settling my debt." He closes his eyes. "For what little it's worth, I'm sorry about what happened to them. To you."

She opens her mouth to say…what? That she doesn't need his pity? That she doesn't need him to help her, or keep her company as he has? That she's survived fine on her own? He interrupts before she can. "I know you don't need my pity, or my apology. But, and maybe I'm a dick for saying this, but…" He runs his hand through his hair, quickly, violently. His eyes _blaze_. "You shut yourself off, Lan Fan, from so many good people around you. And I don't know, maybe you think being alone is safer, or that no one needs to care about a girl who's lost her family and barely getting by. And when people start to care, because that's what they do, you don't let yourself get close enough to find out why. So the thing is, if I don't, who will?"

He pauses, and the emotion in his eyes coils. "And I know I barely know you, but if someone like me can see something like this about you then maybe…it should be said."

Silence falls, and for some crazy, dumb reason, Lan Fan doesn't feel the mix of rage and pain she expects to hit her. Perhaps she is too tired, and perhaps she appreciates that he'd acknowledged the line he crossed. Because Ling is a dick, for saying all that, but he's a dick that is _right_.

So she sighs, and shrugs at him. "Okay. So why? Why are you explaining yourself to me? You didn't have to tell me how you found out about my jobs, or how you found out about my family."

Ling stares at her, and the incredulity rolling off of him is odd to see in this strange girl's face. "Because I don't want to keep things like this from you. Because I'd like to be your friend." He grits his teeth. "And as much as that is true, it's…it's not the only reason."

Part of her wants to tell him to stop now, tell him that he doesn't have to answer her, that she doesn't want to know. If only that would stop him fighting to say what he doesn't have the words to. But then his dam breaks. "It's horrible, horrible to say, but I didn't want you to have hope that, when I said I'd repay you, I could somehow bring them back, or make the pain better. We can't change how anyone lives, or how they die." The look in his eyes is awful. "I explained how the godly realm worked the other day because I didn't want you to feel like…if I'd met you before this, that you could've done something about it. Had more faith. That maybe you could've prevented any of the terrible things that have happened to you. Because you didn't deserve it, any of it, and you certainly don't deserve to blame yourself for it."

It's long and dreadful, the moment that follows. And she understands what he is trying to say, she does. But she'd never once, not in all the time she'd known Ling, entertained the idea that perhaps the gods could have cured her grandfather, or stopped the muggers that killed her parents. Or brought them all back to her, safe and sound. She had not hoped. Not until now, when this god is looking her in the eye and telling her with a terrible, grim finality in his voice that it is not possible.

Lan Fan laughs, exasperated. It surprises Ling. "Give me a little credit. I knew as much already. When I first met you, you were bleeding out on the ground. You're _huángdì,_ and you couldn't heal yourself. How could I expect any other god to be able to bring a mouse back from the dead, much less my family?" She sighs. "And besides. It wouldn't be the same, if you had."

His fists clench, and for half a second she's afraid she's offended him. But she realizes Ling is staring at her with the most peculiar expression in his black-lined eyes. It reminds her of how he'd looked at her in the park, when the lights had bathed them in gold. Then he bursts out laughing. "You are a strange mortal, Lan Fan Sheng. Well." He steals a chunk of her sandwich, and rips off pieces to chuck at the birds, and Lan Fan thinks she'll get whiplash from how fast his mood changes. "In my defense, I was a snake. It wasn't exactly an ideal form to heal myself in."

She gestures at him. "And hiding in the body of a fourteen-year-old girl is ideal?"

"Hey. She's nineteen. I'm not that much of a bastard."

"Give the god a medal, he has a conscience."

He sticks out his tongue. "And I didn't _possess_ her or anything. I just borrowed her face."

She gives him a look. "How is that any better?"

"Well for one, the real Daisy Yin is still up and about on the other side of the river. For another, I get to see you without wearing a ridiculous get-up. Or turning into a huge, fire-breathing dragon."

Lan Fan tears off a piece of bread and rolls it between her fingers. "Why do you want to see me? Or be my friend? I stopped you from bleeding out and in return you got me a better job. Shouldn't you go back to your fickle godly duties?"

Ling, or Daisy-Ling, smiles. "How do you know this isn't part of my fickle godly duties? Looking out for your good, neighborhood waitress-turned-self-defense instructor is a crucial part of my holy regimen. In fact, I'd say it's so important I won't be able to do anything else for the rest of the day. Nay, the _week_." He tilts his head. "And why does anyone want to be friends with anyone else? Because I like you. And I think you like me too, despite everything."

Lan Fan turns away from the sky to look at him. Somewhere down the walkway, a child chirps along with the sparrows flying overhead. The air is strangely stiff again, as though the breeze blows in circles around her. Passerby's voices are muffled; in the distance, she hears a _roar._ Across from her, Daisy-Ling laughs, and the sound of it wipes all other sounds from Lan Fan's mind.

It isn't right, what he did when he tried to repay her. He had no right to violate her privacy, no right to assume she would think what she might've thought when he told her he would pay his debt. He had no right to tell her who she should be, or how she should feel. Not when he'd only known her for a week. But he had told her when she asked, had explained, and apologized. And he had been right, about a few things. Lan Fan had shut herself off, for a long time now. But she does indeed like him, despite everything. Maybe it is time for her to change.

"You shouldn't stare, Lan Fan," Daisy-Ling teases, eyes on the birds. "I know I'm supremely attractive, even for a god, but it's rude. I could smite you for insolence."

And that is another thing. No matter what she's heard him say, or seen him become, still a part of her doesn't believe it. That the girl sitting in front of her, chucking bread at pigeons and cackling when the pieces bounced off their heads, is that talking snake, that dragon. A god.

Daisy-Ling howls when a crumb lands squarely in one bird's eye, and Lan Fan chews on her straw. A young, ridiculous, _boy_ of a god.

"Hey, want to go to Hawaii?"

"…My next job is in ten minutes."

He snaps his fingers. "Actually, it's in an hour and ten minutes."

She sputters. "Did you really just turn time back?"

"No, I just turned your boss' clock hand back. I'm not that all-powerful." He stands up and straightens out his blouse. "I'll change it back to normal later. So. What about it?"

At Lan Fan's expression, Daisy-Ling sighs. "Come on. At least bring me to a cat café. I saw one just down the street."

"If you pelt the cats with bread I'm never taking you anywhere again."

* * *

Ling's goal, Lan Fan decides, is to drive her insane with his 'friendship'.

After their day at the Bund, the next time she'd seen him he had worn the face of a popular singer on the subway back to her home, and they'd had to get off early and run the entire way back. Another time, he'd stolen the appearance of a businessman who just so happened to be having lunch with his wife in the same small café they'd boldly—and in Ling's case _loudly_ —strolled into. When he'd finally learnt his lesson and showed up as himself in all his robed glory, they'd just so happened to be outside a movie production site, and Lan Fan had had to explain to a very angry director why the god she was talking with was not one of his extras.

It'd been worse when he showed up at work. During one of her jobs, she'd been cleaning windows outside the twentieth floor of a building, and a floating Ling had appeared beside her so suddenly that she'd nearly dropped her squeegee cleaner.

So when she's locking her front door and a pair of hands reach from behind her to cover her eyes, a teasing voice asks her to 'guess who', Lan Fan isn't amused. "I swear to the entire damn sky, if you don't stop I will knock you down onto your immortal butt with my baton. I don't care if you're wearing the face of a helpless old woman, I'll do it."

"Alright, alright. I believe you." The hands disappear, and Ling comes around to grin at her. "I've seen you take down a man twice your size, and I quite like my butt."

She doesn't mean to gape, but she does. Ling is himself, with thin eyes and a wide smile, but the robes and shiny headdresses are gone. He's wearing a jean jacket over a white band tee and dark ripped jeans. His long, dark hair is pulled into a ponytail, and she's pretty sure she could live for a week on the money his shoes probably cost. His ears are visible now, large and prominent, and probably the first classically undesirable trait of his that she's seen, but all it does is accentuate the handsome planes of his face. He looks _good_ , and just that thought makes her heart skip a beat.

She resolutely ignores it. "Wow. You really went for the edgy look today."

"Nothing satisfies you, does it?" Unbidden, she huffs out a laugh, and he points at her. "Ha! I've seen you smile! And it was a laughing smile, too!"

"How old are you, six? I laughed that day on the Bund, too."

"Yeah, but that didn't count. You were angry."

"I wasn't." And Lan Fan means it. "I was just trying to wrap my head around it all. You didn't give me much choice, saying everything at once like that."

"This one's different." Ling's expression is soft. She's seen that softness more often lately, and she doesn't really know how she feels about it. "You might not have been angry, but it wasn't whole, then. This one's whole, and real." He crosses his arms. "And six? Try six hundred."

Lan Fan rolls her eyes. "All right, you're an antique. No need to sound so smug about it." When he starts to walk, she hangs onto his elbow. Her hand tingles. "Tell me where you want to go _now_ , in case it's halfway across the city again."

"That was one time!" He protests. "And it didn't take that long."

"It took an hour. I was almost late to the job _you_ got me."

"Well, this will only take half an hour. I know, I looked it up. And you're not working today, so you have no excuse!"

They end up taking two hours to get to the water town that is indeed half an hour away, and they're not there five minutes before Lan Fan has to drag Ling away from a dynastic era clothing store. And a toy shop. And an herb store. They eat at one of the many restaurants overlooking the canals, but Ling tries to entertain a small child and her horrified parents by flipping their meat through the air. Lan Fan pushes him out of there before a riot begins.

After hauling him away from a few more souvenir shops, she finally relents when he points out the river boat service, and spends an absurd amount of her savings to sail on a small canal for twenty minutes. Which is the first thing she points out to Ling when they push off.

"You've been denying me at every turn today, Lan Fan. Compromise dictates you let me have this, at least. And besides, this is part of the experience."

"You know what's also part of the experience? Paying for things you want with your own money."

"You wouldn't have had to pay for it if you'd let me use my godly gifts. One snap of the fingers and—"

"No." She points at him, stern. "I'm not going to let you trick those poor shopkeepers. Even if everything here is stupidly overpriced."

Above them, there is a sudden rumble of thunder. Then another. Then _another._ Lan Fan immediately shuts up, and looks at Ling. There is a crease in his brow, and his jaw locks. But he doesn't look nearly as scared as he had been in that dark park. "Is that you? Do you need to leave?"

A flash of lightning splits the sky right above their heads, and suddenly Ling is shoving her into the small shelter in the middle of the long boat. "Stay still. Don't speak."

His voice is low and terrifying, and Lan Fan knows she should do as he says, should sit and stay silent. But as she huddles there with Ling's hands on her shoulders, something in his words, his behavior, stops all thought in her mind. He'd teleported her to the station, that day months ago. What was it he said? He didn't have time to fly her. She would've made the walk to the station easily in the time she had left, and if he had been called to return he could have left as soon as the thunder hit. He didn't have to send her away from him in order to—. Lan Fan stops, backpedals. _From him_.

Here he is, being called to leave again but making no effort to hide himself as he scans the sky with narrowed eyes. And she realizes. "They're not looking for _you_ , are they?"

"What?" Ling turns to look at her, and the utter terror in his eyes sends dread low in her stomach. Behind him, forked lightning dips down low above the roof of a house. Her entire arm _throbs_. She can taste metal in her throat again.

"They're looking for me."

Her voice is steady, and, caught in his lie, Ling nods. Lan Fan sees his throat bob. "And they will find you if I don't get you out of here soon."

"What will they do to me if they find me?" She feels oddly calm. "You never mentioned a law against gods visiting mortals." Stupid, stupid, she thinks. Of course Ling's frequent forays into this part of the mortal world would attract attention. Of course there were laws against it."

"No, I didn't." Another loud clap of thunder booms. He rubs his forehead. "Okay. I'm sorry to do this to you again, but this is the only way you're getting out of here in one piece."

" _In one piece?"_

"Take my hand." He holds out his hand, and Lan Fan grasps it. It's not cold and clammy, like she expects, but warm and calloused in hers. In spite of the danger in the sky, she can't help thinking that the roughness of it is so oddly _human_. Ling slips a brief smile towards her. "Try not to throw up on me."

Instantly, they're back at the clothing store. Before Lan Fan can even think about hurling, Ling has pushed her into an alcove between the clothing store and the restaurant next to it. She fixes him with a glare. "Okay. I'm safe for now. Explain."

His gaze darts towards the sky and back so fast it makes Lan Fan dizzy. "There's no law against gods going to visit mortals, but it draws a lot of suspicion if you do. Especially if you're me."

"Why? Because you're _huángdì_?" No. That isn't it. She squints at him. "There's something you're not telling me."

"Believe me, there's a lot of things I haven't told you." A loud crack of thunder strikes, and Ling curses, pressing closer to her. The space is small, and they're so close that she can feel the rise and fall of his chest against hers. "Be quiet."

But Lan Fan is on a roll. "You said you weren't that important, and you turned out to be _huángdì._ Now you say the gods are sending out for a manhunt because _you're_ the one in the mortal realm. It's not like you're—"

A flash of lightning illuminates Ling's face. When he'd talked about _tiāndì_ and his children, there had been something dark in his expression. She hadn't recognized it then, but she sees it now on his face in the brief, blinding light, and she understands. She's seen it far too many times on Paninya when she'd grumble about her family.

"You're the prince," she says, just as the sky _screams_.

The god curses again, loudly this time, and glares up at the sky. "If you want to live, hide here and don't make a sound. Not one, Lan Fan!"

She can't help herself. "You're _huángdì_ and a prince. A prince. The prince of the gods _._ I've been snarking at you for months, and you didn't think to tell me you're also _the prince of the Heavens?_ "

"That's not the—see, I didn't _want_ you tre—!" Another flash seems to bring Ling back to his senses. "Okay, yes, you've been insolently rude to me, but I'd rather you were alive and rude than polite and _dead_. Stay here, and be silent, please, Lan Fan."

It had begun to rain a while ago, she realizes, and they're both soaked now. Ling wipes at her face, and a raindrop runs down his like a tear. She swallows. "Okay."

"I'll come back." His hand is warm and wet on her cheek. "I'll…" He shakes his head, looks at her as though he has so much more to say, and leaves. Disappears into fine smoke that quickly dissipates in the storm.

Folding her left arm to her chest, Lan Fan presses against the stone and steels herself, one hand on her baton. Through the pounding rain, she can feel something approaching; a cold, electric presence that has all the wet hairs on the back of her neck standing up. Flattening herself against the wall, she holds her breath as it draws nearer and nearer.

When it reaches her alcove, she glances at it out of the corner of her eye. It is like a moving shadow, if a shadow could be blinding white and crackle like fire. Like lightning made sentient. The air and rain around her seems to freeze, fade away, and through the wrenching ache something _tickles_ in her shoulder. Her heart pounds deafeningly in her ears, and she's not too sure the entity beyond the wall doesn't hear it as it sweeps past. The glow against her eyelids fades, but she doesn't breathe until she opens her eyes to see nothing but sheets of rain cascading down into the canal.

She doesn't move for half an hour even after the storm has stopped.

* * *

It is so incredibly hard, when Paninya asks her a week later why she looks so pale, for Lan Fan not to crack and tell her. Explain to her the reason why she's more distracted than ever in the studio, and constantly staring at the sky, and flinching every time she sees a flash of lightning.

Somewhere along the way of Ling becoming her friend, Paninya had become her friend too.

Lan Fan lies through her teeth. "I've been feeling a bit sick. Nothing too serious."

"That's not good." Paninya sips her boba. "If you don't feel great, don't leave your house. You'll recover faster if you give your body a break."

"And you know how I'll recover fastest? If I still have a roof to live under."

"Hey, let me ask you a question. Do you know any language other than snark?"

Lan Fan smiles, and says in rapid Chinese, "Yes. I also speak 'idiot' pretty well, thanks for asking."

Paninya chucks a napkin at her. "I'm serious, Lan Fan. You've been sloppy the whole week. Izumi asked me if you've been getting enough sleep, and that woman doesn't give a flying fuck about anything."

"That is not true. Izumi is very nice when she wants to be."

"Oh, and when is that? When I'm dead?" Her friend scoffs, finishes her drink, and pushes back her chair. "I'm going to get a piece of cake. You want anything?"

Lan Fan shakes her head, and Paninya leaves. They're sitting outside a small boba shop near the studio, and even at noon there's barely anyone in sight. Sipping her own tea, she takes another long look at the sky. It's a foolish thing to do, and she knows it. He'd been gone longer, and after what happened she isn't surprised if he's gone a year. But it's only been a week, and the ache is back in her chest, and for some vapid, inexplicable reason she doesn't want to think about, she misses him. She had forgotten how annoyingly painful it was to miss someone.

It's the pain that makes a part of her glad that perhaps he had not gotten too close to her. Ling. _Huángdì._ The prince of the Heavens. Savior or no, one day he would grow bored of her, and leave, and she would be left here to miss him while he forgot about her. Her life is nothing, a blip in the giant, spinning record of his. She can't afford to waste whatever time she has left over this. She won't.

"Hey. You there. Miss."

People really need to stop calling her 'miss'. Lan Fan looks towards the source of the voice, irritation clear on her face, and balks. There, in the middle of the street, stands a girl of about fifteen or sixteen, her hair in a braided twist that trails down her shoulders and back in waves and wearing long, deep rose-colored robes. Silver ornaments adorn her head and ears, and she is clutching a red fan in her hands. She's beautiful, but when she stares at Lan Fan her eyes are dark and full of distrust.

Lan Fan slowly rises to her feet. "Can I help you?"

"You are Lan Fan Sheng, are you not?" The girl doesn't even blink. "The mortal my brother is so taken with."

The day is hot, but Lan Fan feels like someone has poured ice down her back. There is no use lying. "Yes. And you must be _nǚwā_ , then? A princess of the Heavens."

"So my brother has spoken of me. Interesting." The girl cocks her head, and the action reminds Lan Fan so much of Ling that she has to suppress the urge to shudder. "He has never mentioned you to me. And as for 'princess of the Heavens', yes I was. I chose to rescind my claim on the throne." She snaps open her fan. "But you knew that already."

"What's your name?"

"I have many, but you may call me Mei." The goddess appraises her, and Lan Fan can feel the judgment rippling through the air. "You've caused quite a stir in the sky. Not many can escape the storm gods. Personally, I didn't think you were reason enough to send them in, but. My father has always been one for dramatics."

Lan Fan places her hand casually on her hip, where her baton is. "Are you here to take me to him?"

"That baton won't help you. I could turn you into a rodent before you even lift it out of your belt." Mei snaps her fan closed. "As for capturing you, I don't know yet. Right now, we will talk."

Lan Fan knows she should be more scared than she is. _Nǚwā_ is one of the progenitor gods, and all the legends say everything of her beauty and nothing of her compassion. But something about Mei's tone, or perhaps her choice of words, has rubbed Lan Fan the wrong way a few times now. And Paninya had been right; she really doesn't know any other language besides snark.

"Then talk away, Your Ex-Highness."

Something flashes in those dark eyes. Mei sniffs. "So, who are you, Lan Fan Sheng? Are you an actress, a singer? Do you have any discernible talents?"

"Nothing that would please you." Lan Fan _itches_ for her baton.

"Do you have qualities that could have been useful to my brother? Money, or influence, or high social standing?" Mei looks down her nose at Lan Fan. "From your appearance, apparently not."

"Look. If Ling is the gold-digging fool you seem to think he is, he's not a very good one." Lan Fan clenches her fists. "And if that _is_ what you think, clearly you don't know your brother as well as you believe."

"And you do?" The goddess raises her eyebrow. "If you know anything of the gods, miss Lan Fan, you'd know that the relationships between the royal sibling are cordial at best. A bond that forms in such a hostile, contentious environment is easily broken and not as easily mended."

"Well. I've heard family therapy works wonders."

"But," Mei interjects, "I do know my brother. Ling Yao and I are two of the younger children of _tiāndì_ , and we grew up together. Like most of the younger royals, I did not share the same bloodthirsty greed for the throne as my older siblings. But Ling did, and he was more ruthless than any of them." She folds her hands into the long sleeves of her robes, her expression blank as a sheet. "He's lied and killed and betrayed more of his own family than you will ever believe. When he came of age, he cut his own mother from his life in an effort to prove himself. And I have no doubt, Lan Fan, that he has lied to you. That he is using you for attention."

Lan Fan is silent, even though her heart races. It doesn't matter what this goddess says to unnerve her, or how she starts to doubt. Lan Fan won't let her know how shaken she may be. After so many years, she'd gotten good at it. Mei continues. "He doesn't feel remorse or guilt, and if you believe any apology from him, then you are the fool. Ling Yao would sooner throw you away than lose his place as the future _tiāndì_. So whatever feeling you have towards him, Lan Fan Sheng, I suggest you quit now. Before you are the one betrayed."

Betrayed. That's how Lan Fan expects to feel. Everything Mei has said, she's seen firsthand. Ling had lied to her, and kept things from her, and when she called him out he'd apologized. And maybe she hadn't seen his greed or his ruthlessness, but even after all these months she doesn't know him. How could she, when she's seen only that which he shows himself as: a kind, ridiculous, charming, boy-god who'd helped her even though she pushed him away. Even though he didn't have to.

Instead, she just feels _angry_. "I know your brother in increments. Small, hourly visits over months. I have no idea who he is when he returns to the sky. I can't claim that your depiction of him is wrong, or that he has not done everything you've said he has. But I think I know some things that you don't." She takes a step forward. "You say that he's a liar, and he is. You say that he is using me, and he might be. The last time I'd seen him, I asked him if there were laws against interacting with mortals. Ling told me there wasn't, and he left soon after. But while Ling is a liar, he's terrible at it, especially when it involves his feelings. In every lie, there are slips up, words he's said or expressions he's made that gave it all away."

His face, after she'd brought up that law. Like a cornered rabbit's. _'No, I didn't._ ' "Even before he left I knew that he'd lied, that there _are_ laws against what he'd been doing. And with those laws in place, only an idiot would jeopardize his entire mission for the throne to hang out with a poor, unemployed mortal, no matter how much attention that would gain him. And I think you know that, of all these things that he is, Ling isn't an idiot."

Lan Fan takes another step. "You say he is ruthless. When I first met him, he'd been injured, and I saved him. Afterwards, he went to your Temple of Souls, looked into my personal history to find out what he could do to repay me, came back, and tricked me into finding a job that will prove to save me in more ways than I know. And then he _kept_ coming back." She keeps moving forward. "He could've been cruel. He could've given me a pile of gold and never seen me again. He could've never repaid me. And if he wanted to be _tiāndì_ as badly as you say, if he had sacrificed his loyalty and his compassion and _his_ _own mother_ for it, he would've left me to my fate that day on the boat when those storm gods had come for me, and gone to beg for forgiveness." She remembers the feeling of him pressing her into the wall, his voice hot and desperate in her face.

"You are right. Ling is a liar. But he's a bad one." Lan Fan takes one last step to stand directly in front of the goddess. The air crackles between them. "And, as it happens, so are you."

Mei raises an eyebrow. "When Ling talked about you, there was an odd look on his face. But I'd seen it before, at that new job he got me. My friend Paninya had the same look on her face when she told me her foster parents were 'monsters'. Full of exasperation and fatigue. And love." She tilts her head, as Ling always did, and tries to find his confidence in her. "I think you understand more than most how a contentious environment can twist good, kind people—your own family—into those monsters. Understand enough to accept the most painful truth that monsters or no, they remain your family. But there is _nothing_ in your expression when you talk about the man you claim is Ling Yao."

Her heart pounds like a storm in her chest. "Whoever you were thinking of, whoever it is you were trying to describe. It sure as hell isn't your brother."

There is a terrible, terrible silence. Lan Fan swallows, her throat parched from weariness and nerves and emotion. The air hangs motionless above them, and the sun seems to shine through tinted glass. As afraid as she is, her mind flashes back to twilight and grass and gold eyes. Then, to her infinite shock, Mei smiles. "Well. Ling did say you were feisty, but you're a lot more talkative than I thought you were going to be."

All of Lan Fan's fire disappears, and she feels hollow. Relief is a cool torrent on her heart. "So Ling has told you about me."

"Missed that little lie, did you?" The goddess _grins_. "And, well, of course. Who do you think covered for him when he went to find you? Even now, I am protecting you in his place." She points at the sky. "They are still searching for you. But I am _nǚwā_ , and they can't touch you while I'm here."

Lan Fan grows lightheaded suddenly. "Where is he?"

"The Heavens, of course. And you can relax. It is not forgiveness he begs for, up in the sky. He pleads for your life." Mei taps her fan to her chin. "On second thought, that's not something to relax about, is it?"

For once, Lan Fan can't bring herself to retort. She sways on her feet. Here she is, insulting him to his sister, and all this time he's spent in the Heavens is because he is trying to save her life.

"You are correct, Lan Fan Sheng, in your reasoning. My brother is not bloodthirsty, or ruthless. A liar, yes. Greedy, _absolutely_. He had desired the throne, but after watching all his brothers and sisters die for it? After watching the violence rage on and on, until those who still lived withdrew their claim and he was the only candidate left?" Mei shakes her head. "He'd no longer wanted anything to do with it. And now it is being thrust upon him."

"What will they do to him if he doesn't take it?"

"What have they not already done?" Mei cocks her head again. "Did you not wonder where his wounds came from? He'd been acting out, and our father saw fit to have him banished to the mortal realm, to find and defeat all the demons hiding there." The goddess scowls. "Ling wouldn't have been given such a punishment if his mother had been there."

"Why wasn't she there." Mei's earlier comment strikes her across the face. "Did Ling really never see her again after he came of age?"

Mei smiles again, but it is a bleak, mournful smile. "Yes. But not out of choice. _Tiāndì_ had her executed before Ling could even cut his cake." She straightens and stares at Lan Fan, and this time her eyes are warm. "I did not come here to frighten you, Lan Fan, or upset you. Ling is the only family left that I can still acknowledge, and I protect you because you are important to him. But I am protecting him as well. From your response to my description, I could find out if your feelings matched those I have seen in him, and you are true."

Lan Fan manages a disbelieving laugh. "So you lied to what? To test me? To see if I was worthy of him?"

"I lied to let you understand what you've become. To my brother, from whom everything has been taken, and to the gods responsible. Whether you like it or not, Lan Fan Sheng, your lives are tangled. You can no longer go back." Mei folds her arms back into her robes. "Also, I wanted to figure out what Ling sees in you."

Lan Fan wants to argue, but a sudden thought hits her. "Wait. Paninya. What did you do to her?"

"Your friend is fine. I've stopped time around us. If you'd bothered to look around once during that speech of yours, you'd have known." In the sky, the faintest echo of thunder sounds, and Mei sighs. "That'll be my dear brother. Wanting to know how you are, no doubt. You'll be safe, even if I am not here. My power is far stronger than Ling's at the moment. I shall return."

Without another word, the goddess transforms into a swallow and soars up, up into the clouds. The breeze moves again against her cheek, and the sunlight twinkles, but Lan Fan stands frozen, her heart pounding with something like shock or rage or sadness. Only when Paninya finally comes back outside, muttering something about gawking Chinese grandmothers, does Lan Fan think to walk back to the table. She sits down and puts her heavy head in her hands.

"Squawking for ten minutes about her—Lan Fan? Hey." Paninya's hand is warm on her back. "Are you okay?"

A pressure builds behind her eyes, and Lan Fan wills herself to inhale. Somewhere, she can hear the chime of a clock, low and ringing and final. "I hope so."

* * *

 **A/N:** Part 2! This was a long one.

 **TRANSLATIONS** (in case you guys forgot):  
Tiāndì = God/Emperor/Ruler of Heaven  
El Jefe = Spanish for 'the boss'  
Huángdì/Huángshén = Yellow Emperor/Deity, one of the Five Heavenly Deities and represents earth. Is considered to be the progenitor of all Han Chinese people  
Nüwá = Mother Goddess, associated with the creation of mankind and mending the world order

On to the last part!

Also on AO3 (my name there is wild_and_free)


	3. Chapter 3

**TIP: translations in Author's Notes at the end**

Turns out, Paninya does learn why Lan Fan had been so upset. Just not in the way she might've wanted to. "Lan Fan! Hey, I know the studio isn't open today, but— _Whoa_!"

It starts like this. Two of the longest months of Lan Fan's life had passed since the goddess approached her on the road in front of that boba shop. One day, at Mei's request, Lan Fan had taken her to the studio, standing in a corner and watching as the goddess moved about the shop. She'd started regretting it the minute they walked in. Every dismissive comment brought her closer and closer to committing murder.

"I haven't returned to the mortal world in centuries." Mei had said, twirling a bō staff expertly through the air. "I'll admit, your technological advances are fascinating, but they've made you slow. Lazy. I'm glad this studio still teaches the old ways."

"Do you know martial arts?"

"I was one of the younger royal children, and born the next _nǚwā._ I would not still be alive if I hadn't trained in all the Chinese martial techniques."

Lan Fan had been about to suggest they go a few rounds when Paninya walked in, greeting her as she had and waving. Immediately, Mei lifted her hand and sent a blinding arrow of blue light hurtling through the air towards her. Paninya had yelped as she dove out of the way, and the light hit the wall so hard Lan Fan could feel the building shake. When it'd exploded into wisps of flame, the cracked hole it left behind is the size of her head.

Now, Mei lowers her hand, but the blazing intent in her eyes doesn't fade.

Cursing, Lan Fan rushes to Paninya's side. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Paninya swears, turning to look at the hole. "I think."

Lan Fan turns on Mei. "What the hell was that?"

"She may have been a threat."

"Paninya's _human_! At least check if it's a god before you go shooting people!"

"Gods are not my only concern." Mei straightens. "Until Ling can somehow manage to convince our father not to kill you, they will be using any means to try and find you. Humans are no exception."

"You mean they'll disguise themselves as human to try and get to me?"

"Yes, and the fact that you did not suspect this is exactly why they would. They know you'll be expecting gods. So, they will not appear as gods."

Lan Fan pinches the bridge of her nose. "This is ridiculous."

"This is your reality now, Lan Fan." Mei waves her hand, and the pieces of plaster from the hole in the wall fly up and fit themselves into the crevices. In seconds, it's as though nothing had happened. "I suggest you get used to it."

Paninya, who had been watching everything with wide eyes, clears her throat. "Okay, someone better start explaining something, because I was almost murdered by a straight-up fireball."

Lan Fan looks at her, and sighs. Her chest feels heavy when she breathes. "I'm sorry, Paninya. I'll explain everything."

Mei actually _sputters_. "Did you not hear what I just said?"

"Seeing as Paninya isn't currently trying to teleport me anywhere, I _think_ it's safe to say she's not a god. And you just blew your cover all the way into the next decade. She deserves an explanation."

"There are other solutions." Mei raises her hand. "I can take away her memories and send her on her way. She won't even know she decided to come here."

Paninya squawks. Lan Fan steps in front of her and glares at the goddess. "No. You don't know the damage you could do."

"It will not harm her."

"And you're so sure of that from your trip here centuries ago?"

"This is a risk I'm willing to take."

"Well I'm not." Lan Fan balls her fists. "You said the gods would use other humans to get to me. Whether she remembers it or not, Paninya will be in danger, because if the gods don't already know she is connected to me, they'll find out."

And it isn't just her, either. They would target Izumi, who always slipped more into Lan Fan's pay than she deserved, and Sig, Izumi's gentle husband who saved the best pork neck for her. Maybe they would find Ed and Al, Izumi's German boys who did not even know Lan Fan, and use them, hurt them.

The twisted irony of it all isn't lost on her. She had closed herself off and pushed people away since she was a child. And those she had not: her grandfather, her parents. They had left anyway. After, she'd thought it was better that everyone she met had left her alone. It was safe. She wouldn't hurt them, and they wouldn't hurt her.

And now, when she had met Paninya and Izumi and Sig and not ignored them. When she inched her way closer and let them look past all the yellow tape. Now Lan Fan had hurt them in a way that was worse than her parents, just trying to protect their child, or her grandfather, battling a sickness long on its way. She had brought this into their lives. Their blood is on her hands because this time it _is_ her fault.

The full weight of it is staggering. Ling had been right, when he said she had to let people in. But she would not have met any of them, or put them in the dangerous path of her own problems, had she not met him. That prince-god, who'd tricked her into getting that job.

Mei puts her hand down. Paninya puts hers on Lan Fan's shoulder. Lan Fan is too lost in her clouded thoughts to care. A great many things would not have happened had she not met Ling.

"Well, if this proves to be a horrible decision, and it will," Mei folds her arms. Lan Fan exhales. "You had better start talking now."

* * *

Paninya takes the whole story in stride, the next few days. But Lan Fan notices that she will not look Mei in the eyes.

"Can you blame me? She's a goddess and she hurled a ball of fire at me." Paninya angles her body away from Mei, who ignores her and sits with her eyes closed. They are at a pizza place near Paninya's school, and the girl scoots her chair as close to Lan Fan's side of the table as possible.

"Yes, well. I don't think sitting closer to me will help."

"You're right. I should sit behind you. Then if she tries anything she'll hit you first."

"Of course. What else are friends for?"

"Oh, shush. She can't touch you. Your god boyfriend put her in charge of protecting you, right? And sister or no, he will not be happy if she kills you."

Lan Fan manages to keep her voice normal, but her face feels horribly warm. "First of all, he's not my anything. Secondly, Mei's not going to hurt you."

"Yes. You're clearly human. Whether you remain so is questionable." The goddess doesn't even open her eyes. "Or rather, whether a god wearing your face replaces you to get close to Lan Fan is questionable. Even with my protection."

"Excuse me, _wearing my face_? What, are they going to skin me and make me into a onesie?"

"No. They will capture you, transform into you and, if you do not interfere, possibly spare your life."

"Wonderful." Paninya leans her head on her arms. "Thank god—er, _gods_ —I finally got that judo move down, Lan Fan. Those douchewads can come at me. No offense, Mei."

"It won't be that simple, Paninya." Lan Fan stares down at her hands. The wind blows her bangs into her face, and when her loose hair brushes her shoulder she shivers. Since that day at the water town, it hasn't stopped tingling. "They'll have all their abilities, their powers. They could stop time with a snap of their fingers and you'd be helpless."

"Time? The gods could stop her heart before she even knew they were there." Mei says matter-of-factly. She looks at Paninya. "Lan Fan says you are in school, so you can't simply lock yourself in. Stick to larger crowds when you are not with us. You are less of a target if it will take more effort to find you."

Paninya nods. "That's easy. There's always huge crowds of people on campus that aren't even students."

Lan Fan smiles, and tries not to let Paninya see the doubt eating away at her thoughts. That day, after she'd explained everything to her, and the girl had promptly fallen asleep on her shoulder in front Sig Curtis' closed meat shop, Lan Fan had turned to Mei and wondered how in all the world she could possibly ask this goddess to protect her friend. Protect Izumi, and Sig, and all the billions of people that did not deserve her consequences.

Maybe she had let a little of that fight, that frustration show on her face, because Mei had taken one look at her and sighed. As though she was tired of Lan Fan's hesitation. "I was sent here to protect you, at the specific request of my brother who cares for you, above all else. You wish to protect those that you care for, but you cannot without my help and you think I will not do so. That I am not already doing so. But I am _nǚwā._ With her name, I inherit her responsibilities, her treasures and goals. Mankind is her creation, and I won't let it suffer in this stupid search for you."

Lan Fan had never liked her more than in that moment.

But even though Mei is watching over her friends, even though Paninya has shaken off her wariness and is now avidly telling her what a onesie is, Lan Fan can't shake off the nagging sensation that this, everything that has happened, is _her_ mess to deal with. The thought of Mei helping her, of Ling up in the skies trying to save her. Lan Fan feels the strange wrongness of it like a tightening pinch in her stomach.

When she'd shut people out, she shut out their help, too. The years she was alone, she saved herself. She survived, and what she'd had to do, how she'd done it, was in her own control. To rely on others, a god she barely knows and a goddess he'd dragged in, to put other people's lives in their hands along with hers… It is different than Izumi paying her for weeks she hadn't worked. Here, there are not even the frayed strings of a semblance of control for her to grasp.

"What is this place we're sitting outside of. 'Pizza'? What is 'pizza'?"

When Lan Fan looks over, Paninya's eyes actually bulge out from her head. "Okay. No. I can't explain this. We're getting some right now for dinner. Gods can eat, right?"

Mei seems to be trying very hard not to roll her eyes. "Yes. We're not trees."

"I'll be back. Be prepared. You'll never want to eat anything else after this."

She'd stood on her own two feet for so long that now, when the weight had become unbearable, she had forgotten how to share it. But forgotten does not mean lost, and lost does not mean forgotten, and besides. She has no choice now.

After Paninya goes to find a menu, Mei looks at Lan Fan. "Your friend says that like it's a good thing. I don't see how my refusal to eat is in any way good. And it's impossible. When I return to the Heavens, I still have to consume _something_ to survive."

Lan Fan huffs a small laugh. "You know that's not what she—"

Something like scalding ice runs down her spine. It's so soft on the breeze that she barely hears it, but she does. A whisper of her name. _Lan Fan_.

She looks at Mei, but the goddess' eyes are closed again, her hands folded in her lap. Lan Fan knows she's searching with her power, searching through all the people in the mall, in the city, in the continent. She would know instantly where and who the whisper came from. Mei is motionless, but Lan Fan has a feeling she would be smiling, had things been different.

Slowly, she gets up and scans the area, taking slow steps towards the slanted side of the building, where the setting sun has put the small space beyond in shadow. Summer is long gone, and the days are short. Her baton has chilled in the cool air when she grasps it, and when Lan Fan catches a glint of gold in the potted bushes, all her breath leaves her body in a cloudy white puff. Out of earshot of the restaurant's customers, she sits down on the ground behind the bush, her body blocked by the pot. In the shifting darkness, Lan Fan can just barely make out the snake's head poking out of the leaves.

"Are you okay?" She starts, her voice croaking at the end. "You're not injured again, are you?"

"No. I'm not." Ling's golden eyes gleam at her. "Are you? Have you been attacked at all?"

"No. Your sister's here, protecting me and telling me constantly how good she is at it."

"I told you. Self-important and never shuts up about it. And now she gets to see you with your hair down." He sighs, and it sounds wistful. "The only times I've seen you with your hair down, and it's when I'm an animal. Or disguised as a girl."

Lan Fan almost laughs at that, because it is twilight again, and she'd missed his voice, and now that he is here somehow all her burdens seem lighter.

"One thing I love about your city? The buildings are all so oddly structured. We can talk out in the open like this and other people don't notice a thing."

"Yes." But now is not the time for laughter. She stares at him, solemn. "What are you doing here, Ling?"

The snake looks up at her. Behind him, the cheesy smell of pizza wafts past the edge of the building, through the branches of the trees. Voices sound hollow in her ears. "To make a choice that I will pay dearly for, all the rest of my life. The Heavens will not allow a child of the throne to have ties with mortals, and as I am the only one remaining I am bound to that role. To leave it would be to plunge the sky into chaos that would devastate the entire earth."

She swallows. "Will you bring me back to be killed, then?"

"I will erase your memory of me, and of Mei, and of all the events you've witnessed pertaining to the gods. Or I will take your life where you sit now."

Lan Fan thinks she is falling through the ground, her chest caving in to touch her spine. She hopes Ling's mother hadn't felt like this. "Seems to me that I'm the one paying dearly for this choice." Her hands are cold in her lap. "And I should. This has always been my problem to solve."

"It's _not_." Ling sticks his head out further. "Lan Fan, you didn't ask for any of this! I did this to you!"

"Yes." She chuckles faintly. A great many things are clear in her mind. "I guess I didn't. I didn't ask for your friendship, or your attention. I didn't ask to meet Izumi and Sig and Paninya. I definitely didn't ask to be tested by your, frankly pretentious, sister, or for you to go and beg them to spare me. I didn't ask you to come back every time you leave, and upend my life the way you do, and make me feel like I'm not in control anymore."

The snake winces with every word. She sighs. "But you didn't do any of it _to_ me. Everything that's happened is because of what I chose. I could've ignored you, when you first spoke to me in the weeds on the side of the road. I could've ignored you every time after. But I didn't. Isn't that why you're here, staring at me with those sad golden eyes of yours and telling me to decide my own fate? Those were my choices, and now these are my results. My scores to settle, along with yours."

He slithers out from the bushes to reach the ground, coiling his body beneath him on the asphalt. Staring, Ling tilts his head at her and says in a voice like marble. "Your choice. All of them. Do you regret it?"

Regret. What could she regret? Daisy-Ling in mid-cackle and throwing bread at pigeons. A squeegee cleaner flying up at her and falling just before she can grab it. Hot dragon's breath stirring the haze against her bare legs. Ling's rain-soaked chest pressing her back against the wall. A park bathed in gold, and golden, glittering eyes shining like spotlights into hers. Exactly as they are now. Lan Fan half-thinks that if she looks up, the sky would look just like it did that first summer night. As though the sun is falling under the world.

It's quite simple. She says, "No."

All Ling does is nod.

Sometime after the end of one breath and the start of the next, Lan Fan is back at the table. For half a moment, she is too terrified to feel queasy, but Mei is still in front of her, eyeing the pizza a server has just brought, and the tension eases from her shoulders. Beside her, Paninya curses. "How in the hell, Lan Fan? What happened to you now?"

"I don't…" The nausea hits her then, and she puts her hands to her mouth. Her mind teeters on a precipice.

"You'd look like that too, if you'd just been given a death sentence." The goddess pokes at a bit of crust. "But I suppose it won't be in effect for much longer. You really are a survivor, Lan Fan."

When Lan Fan is sure she won't retch or laugh or scream, she sees Mei smile.

* * *

It isn't until much later that Lan Fan learns why the Curtises had left, all those months back. One day, she goes into the back room of the studio to find Izumi coughing up blood into her trashcan, and promptly cancels Paninya's class so the girl can call an ambulance.

In her haste, Paninya mispronounces 'ambulance' in Chinese, and Lan Fan has to tell her the right words four times before she swears loudly in English and corrects herself. Izumi yells at the both of them to stop panicking and to pass her the pills in her bag. When Lan Fan takes them out and hands them to her, she sees the label on one of the bottles, and her blood pools thick and cold in her veins. It is the same type of medication her grandfather had taken before he died.

Paninya also seems to recognize them. "These pills. They're used to treat _cancer_ , Mrs. Curtis."

"It's none of your concern, Paninya."

"But—"

"Alright, Izumi," says Lan Fan, quietly. "You don't have to explain."

But Paninya won't stop wondering, and Lan Fan won't meet Izumi's eyes, and eventually the woman relents. "It's not what you think. Five years ago, I had surgery for a benign tumor in my uterus. It went wrong. Now, I take these pills to keep remaining cancerous cells from growing in whatever's left down there."

Paninya's the first to find her voice. "And the blood?"

"My other organs are all jumbled up, too. I used to spit up a lot more, but recently I went back to Germany to see a doctor friend of mine." Izumi looks at Lan Fan. "He's the father of those boys I told you about. He helped me, but I still cough up some stuff every now and then."

Lan Fan knows, had suspected somewhere in her mind, just how much Izumi wanted children. Sig had told her once before—softly, brokenly—that they couldn't, and the studio was very near an elementary school. She had seen the look on Izumi's face when she watched the students running down the street and cheering. A mix of joy and sadness.

She thinks of the extra bits of cash slipped into her pay every week, and doesn't say anything at all.

"Lan Fan, do you want to go out and see where that ambulance is?" Paninya glowers in the direction of the door. "I know my Chinese is terrible, but we're not that far from a hospital."

Nodding, Lan Fan pats Izumi's hand and rises, striding towards the door. As she enters the main studio hall, the tingle in her left shoulder starts to _throb_ , and she gets the sensation that she's being watched. Her eyes drift towards the entrance. A few steps from the curb outside, a tall man stands, his hands behind his back. He's a foreigner, dressed simply, and can't look less than sixty or so, but Lan Fan can tell his build is strong, muscular. His dark hair is buzzed short, with a thick mustache and glaring, pinpoint eyes staring through the sunlit glass at her.

Eye. In the place of his left one, there is a black eye patch.

She knows he's a god. She can feel the power radiating off of him from here. Her arm is shaking, and her heart pounds in her throat. She will not escape him. Lan Fan lifts her chin and walks towards the glass door.

"Hello. You're not here for a lesson."

"No." The man's voice resounds in her head, cold and deep. "I am _yánwáng_ , and you must come with me.

"Why?" She knows why.

"You are Lan Fan Sheng _._ You cannot live another day."

Lan Fan pushes open the door, and no cold breeze brushes against her face. The air is deathly still again. His presence washes over her like oil on her skin. " _Nǚwā_ protects me _._ If you would like to kill me, you must do so without your gifts."

That had been the first line of defense Mei had left with Lan Fan, after Ling's brief visit. She'd had to leave, to go deal with the fallout of her brother's decision, so Mei had waved her hand over Lan Fan's head and declared that even _tiāndì_ himself couldn't access his powers if he attacked her. "But be warned. You will not hold out long against a god, even with all your skill," she said, in between bites of pizza. "Luckily, your friends have a fair amount of fighting expertise as well. The gods cannot prevent them from fighting alongside you."

But Izumi is hurt, and Paninya can't leave her, and Lan Fan will not let them suffer one glimpse of this dark, one-eyed god. She readies her stance. The sun goes behind a cloud, and the shadow twists the smile he gives her. "So be it."

The door hasn't even fully closed behind her when he strikes, his arm whistling through the air above her head as Lan Fan just barely ducks in time. She aims blows for his middle, but he blocks them easily, twisting to grab her elbow and launch her up into the air. Tucking in, she flips and tries to kick his head, but he sidesteps and delivers a fist to her stomach.

Lan Fan barely has time to land and draw breath before his foot is flying at her face. She catches it, her leg sliding forward to kick his out from under him, but he's back up and striking her thigh before she can get a punch in. His hand grazes her bad shoulder, and Lan Fan hides her hiss of pain by kicking the side of his head. When he stops her foot, she twists her body to let her other leg come up and collide with his left side. His blind side. They both go down, and she's on her feet as soon as he releases her ankle in surprise. She is gasping, her abdomen burning with each breath. Her shoulder is in _agony_.

"Impressive." The god looks barely ruffled. "But not enough."

Lan Fan is moving before he stops talking, her feet finding footholds in the building's brickwork as she leaps sideways across its surface. The glass door rattles when she vaults off of it, her leg outstretched towards his face. He manages to dodge, and she lands as lightly as she can on the hood of a nearby car, taking off again to flip over his high kick. Blowing her bangs out of her face, she grabs his fist as it flies towards her, and twists it inwards to flip him over her shoulder. As he tumbles through the air, the god uses the momentum to pull her off the ground, his feet curling in and colliding with her face and her side with a loud crack.

Pain and blood blind her for a moment, and Lan Fan can feel the broken bones shifting in her swelling nose. From the shooting agony in her chest, he's fractured a rib as well. She glances up into his amused face. He is toying with her. _Get up._ Unbidden, her grandfather's voice resounds in her head. _Get up_. Wincing, she wipes the pouring blood from her face and twists, aiming a roundhouse kick to his blind side. He catches it easily, but in between the blood dribbling over her mouth she smiles. Pulling herself with her standing foot, she drags her body between his legs, and when he drops her foot she kicks _up_.

He grunts, but it is higher pitched, and Lan Fan hauls herself up. She is too late to block the backhand he deals, and she is launched backwards with the force of it, her body cracking against the studio's glass door. _Get up_. Black bubbles dance in front of her eyes from the pain in her face, and she can vaguely hear someone pounding on the glass and yelling her name _._

"More mortals. Come to check on you, no doubt." The god smiles. "Go on. Beg them to come to your aid."

Lan Fan glares, and launches herself at him. "You don't _touch_ them."

" _You_ are foolish, Lan Fan Sheng, to continue to resist." His fist just barely misses her temple. She aims for his groin again. "Your energy is waning."

It is. With every successful hit she makes, he has dealt her three. Each blow he blocks is weaker and weaker, and she cannot breathe past the bone and the agony and the blackness. But it is not just her injuries that sap her strength. By accident or design, the god has been stealing her energy. She clips his clavicle with her foot, but she might as well be kicking rock from how little he seems to feel it. When he hooks his leg over hers and dislocates her knee, she's barely conscious enough to cry out.

Then the bastard grabs her bad arm. And Lan Fan freezes. He says something, but the words are fuzzy in her ears, and her legs give out until he's all but holding her up by the shoulder. In her periphery, she can see Paninya and Izumi's horrified faces, screaming through the glass. Lan Fan looks at her legs. _Get up_.

"So this is the arm with that old bullet wound?" The god pushes her down to lie on her chest. When he bends her arm back, she nearly bites through her lip. "It is a pity, what happened with your parents. And the joint of your shoulder is damaged, twisted. Beyond repair, by now."

Her breath comes out in short huffs, and even her terror is dulled by the wrenching torment in her shoulder. _Get up._ The god leans on her legs, and bends down, just a little, so when she turns her head she can see the cold look on his lined face. "Let's add 'useless' to that list."

It's cataclysmic. He yanks her arm, and his foot comes driving down onto that socket, and the splintering of the bone echoes in Lan Fan's ears. She _screams_.

Her body is nothing but a writhing, fractured, shrieking feeling. She would've blacked out then, but the god pulls on her limp arm, and a second scream rips out of her. Vaguely, Lan Fan tastes blood and grit in her mouth, and the crunching mixture reminds her of what her shoulder must be, now. Bile bubbles up into her throat.

The next few scenes come in waves. Thunder sounds through the roaring in her mind. Rocks shake in front of her. The weight on her body lifts, and the air in front of her grow lighter. Glass rains onto the asphalt near her head. Voices bellow over her. Someone's knees hide her view as they bend over her body. Drops of something trickle down her forehead.

When gentle, shaking hands pick her up and hoist her into a lap, all Lan Fan can see is black, and red. Yellow, as one of the hands strokes her cheek. She tries to lift her own hand to meet it, but too late, because it is so dark again now, and she is drifting, drifting.

* * *

"Help me." Paninya's voice is scratchy over the line. "She will not stop looking for pizza places. We always get pepperoni, and I _love pepperoni,_ and if I even see another slice of it I am going to throw up."

"Gross." Lan Fan pins her phone between her ear and shoulder as she turns her key into the door lock. "Get her sausage and mushroom. She won't ever touch pepperoni again."

"Normally, I'd fight you on that, but even hearing the word 'pepperoni' is making me nauseous."

"Then stop saying it." She laughs, the breeze warm on her face. Finally, it's starting to feel like spring again.

"By the way, you missed the best thing I've ever witnessed yesterday. Izumi's German boys came back to the studio again."

"I _know_ you know their names, Paninya. They've been here for a month already."

"Yeah, yeah, _Dummkopf Eins_ and _Zwei_. Anyway, Mei won't stop looking at the younger one, right, and when he smiles at her, I kid you not, she blushes red as a firetruck." There's an indignant squawk in the background, and Paninya's grin is audible. "I think they really hit it off."

"You should've invited him. That would've solved both your problems."

"I did, but Izumi's making them help her with adoption stuff first. Also, Mr. Rage-quit wants a rematch. You sure your shoulder's up for it?"

"It's been six months. My shoulder is fine." Lan Fan stares at her arm, limp in its sling.

She hears from Paninya what had happened after. The god had deadbolted the studio door, and no matter what Izumi had thrown at it, the glass would not break. All they could do was watch as he beat her, wrecked her shoulder. He was so close to snapping her neck, when he hesitated. There had been something in the air that had made all the hairs on Paninya's arms stand up, and had made her metal knees throb, and had made that dark god go still.

Then the loudest clap of thunder she'd ever heard had shaken the ground, shattered the door. The golden light Lan Fan had just barely seen had been blinding, and it spoke in a booming, angry voice. The god got off of Lan Fan, and Izumi had pulled herself out the door to kneel in front of her body, staunching her bloody shoulder. From what Paninya could remember, when she went to help Izumi turn her onto her back, the voice said something about Lan Fan being under the protection of the Heavens, and _yánwáng_ returning for just punishment. The god had shed his mortal disguise—a well-known German terrorist, apparently—and turned into a large, inky cloud that went quietly along into the light.

They'd gone, but a smaller glowing figure remained and moved towards Lan Fan. Then Mei was pushing her way next to Izumi to help set her broken nose, and Paninya couldn't believe that she was _crying,_ her tears splashing down onto Lan Fan's face. When the glowing figure reached them, it had turned into a boy in a bright yellow robes and unbound black hair all down his back. Paninya had thought he was a ghost, his face was so pale. When the ambulance sirens finally sounded in the distance everyone had moved out of the way, but he just sank to the ground and lifted her into his arms, cradling her against his shaking body. The paramedics had thought they were actors shooting a drama.

He'd stayed in by Lan Fan's hospital bed the whole time she was asleep, and when she woke he was gone. Half a year has passed, but her chest won't stop aching, and she won't stop feeling his hand on her face. Warm as sunlight on carpet.

Ling's absence is not the worst of her problems. The ball of her humerus bone had been crushed. So had the part of her shoulder blade where its socket was, and even a bit of her clavicle. Lan Fan would've had to save up for years in order to afford a shoulder replacement, if that had been it. But that bastardly death god had shredded the nerves in her shoulder. And she could no longer feel her arm.

Her old bullet wound had been infected, and the doctors hadn't pushed for nerve surgery. But Paninya's foster family specialized in prosthetics and orthotics, and she was the first to suggest a replacement arm. Lan Fan staunchly refused, but not out of vanity or fear. She knew the cost of amputation, and it alone almost made her want to call that _yánwáng_ back and let him to finish the job. With that money, she could afford shoulder and nerve replacements for both her arms.

After she'd been released, her arm in a steel contraption of a sling, Lan Fan found out that Izumi had paid for her outrageous hospital bill. She managed to get a small job as an English tutor, and at her insistence Izumi had agreed to let her work free shifts as a non-combative instructor at the studio. Lan Fan had never touched what little inheritance Fu had left for her, had deemed it to be used only in emergencies. By month five she'd taken out half of it to pay back what was left. Paralyzing her arm seemed like a good enough emergency, anyway.

Paninya says something about getting boba, and hangs up. Lan Fan looks at the sky. There's not a wisp of white or gray today, and away from all the crowding buildings the blue seems to swallow up her gaze. The movement pulls slightly at her injury, and a sharp twinge races up her neck. But she hadn't lied; her shoulder _is_ fine, even with the spine pain. And learning to fight again was easier than she expected. It helped that her left arm had always been weaker, that she'd grown up learning how to use that weakness to her advantage. In three months, Lan Fan could deck Paninya again, and even Mei, in the times she was here, had started finding it harder and harder to beat her. Slowly, she is picking herself up.

She stares at the limb, pale in its sling, and in her distraction Lan Fan passes someone in the street. Someone standing right in the middle, staring at her with flecks in his eyes the color of daybreak. _Hey. Miss_.

Lan Fan spins around, the words hanging in the air like a thread between them, and Ling's eyes are full of anguish and relief and delight and the offer of something more. He looks at her over his shoulder, and some cowardly part of her wants him to turn back around. Wants her to turn back around, and walk far, far away.

He clears his throat. "Um. Hello."

"It's only been half a year. Did you forget my name?"

Stupid, stupid to joke right now. Ling turns around fully, his eyes scanning her. She wonders if he knows he's taking her in, if he knows that she's been taking him in, too. He's wearing the same clothes he wore in the water town. His long hair is in a ponytail again, and she can see every shadow in his face, every dark circle under his eyes. He still looks good.

"I wanted to see you. But there were things I had to do, before I could."

"I know." Mei had told her as much. Lan Fan drags her eyes away. "How did you convince them to let me live?"

"Mei told you about my mother, right?" Ling stares at her. "She was mortal, before _Tiāndì_ brought her to the Heavens and made her the goddess _guānyīn,_ and she'd been well liked. There were a lot of powerful deities that harbored a lot of resentment towards _tiāndì_ for having her killed. This, and the fact that _El jefe_ had done plenty of despicable things to gods and humans alike, made it a lot easier to turn them against him. Even my siblings were furious when he passed the mortal ban." He rubs the back of his neck. "As much as he pushes me towards the throne, my father is very attached to it. His power is all he has, after everything he's done. Once I made him think that there was a chance the other gods would overthrow him, he retracted the ban right away."

Lan Fan doesn't know what to say. She wants to laugh. She wants to kill something. Everything that'd happened, everything she'd felt and done and gone through. Used, to find one brief moment of vengeance, and then they'd wiped it all away. Like fog from glass. She stares down at her arm, and lets all her anger and misery and bitterness show on her face.

Ling nods, and his hands ball into fists. "Go ahead. Tell me to leave, if you want. You have every right. Either way, I will never let the gods forget what was done to you. All the rest of my life."

He'd said that before. And Lan Fan knows Ling means it as much now as he meant it when he'd given her that choice, that small string of control. As she meant what she'd told him in return. "You didn't do any of this to me. Sending you away won't make it better, and I'll just feel worse."

He struggles to hide it, but when Lan Fan looks up she can still see the remnants of relief in his expression. A breath of wind she doesn't feel shifts the shoddy twist of a bun she'd wrestled her hair into so that it rests her bad shoulder, and she stiffens at the prick in her neck.

Ling takes a step forward, his hand awkwardly outstretched. "What did he do to your arm?"

His expression is so full of sadness and frustration that, when all her anger is gone, Lan Fan doesn't think she can look at him. "Come on." She starts walking, and he settles next to her, and she feels his heat like shivers running through her body. Lan Fan stares straight ahead, and tells him.

The sun is high in the sky when she's done, and up ahead she can see where it glints off the water in the grass. Ling trembles next to her, and when Lan Fan looks up his face is pinched tight with rage. "Can nothing be done to restore it?"

"I can still replace the bones, the nerves, all of it. But it's risky. With the infection, I might not be able to move my arm much regardless." Lan Fan sighs. "Then I'll have to spend the rest of my life paying for an operation that didn't even work."

"Then a replacement arm entirely?" Ling looks pointedly at her. "Mei told me both Paninya and Izumi had connections."

"They saved me that day. Izumi already paid for my hospital bill. I won't owe them anything else." Lan Fan had said as much to Izumi, when she told her that one of her German boys had a metal leg, and was married to a prosthetics specialist. "Mei, too. They're all bent on letting me exploit them."

"Are they? You aren't using them, not unfairly or selfishly. And don't argue with me, I know that's the definition of exploit. I looked it up. _They're_ offering. They care about you, and they want you to have the best and be the best." Ling's voice is soft. "Friendship is glorious, because you help each other without reason. Without wanting compensation. And you are fiercely independent, and stubborn, and you have a strong sense of obligation that is both annoying and admirable, Lan Fan, and I hope to all the gods that someday you'll learn that relying on other people doesn't change any of that. It just means you've grown in other, better ways."

He leans back, and Lan Fan realizes they've stopped walking, and Ling is standing so, so close to her. At her silence, he swallows, and Lan Fan knows he thinks he's crossed a line, and she wants too badly to wipe it off his face. But how do you reply, when someone keeps unearthing all your feelings and profoundly understanding them, in every moment? How could she think, all this time, that he barely knew her? He had been the first to try.

In the end, she says, hoarsely, "Where was all that half a year ago?"

Ling's expression breaks, and when he laughs Lan Fan thinks that bellowing sound is the best thing she's ever heard. "I don't know. It seems I have a penchant for rude, self-righteous speeches."

"It must be a family trait."

"Yes." Ling smiles, and tilts his head at her. She _melts_. "Mei told me about the test. Sorry about that. I should report her for emotional abuse."

"That's not even it. When she stopped time, everyone and everything else stayed the same, but I was still changing. Now I'm about fifteen minutes older than I should be. Technically, she aged me."

"You don't really start dying until you're in your thirties. That's when your…what is it? Cells? They perish faster than they can regenerate. And don't argue with me. I know. I looked it up."

"I'll argue with you if I damn well please." Lan Fan squints at him. "Someday we're going to talk about where and how you're looking these things up."

Ling laughs again, and Lan Fan knows why he's letting her drive the conversation away from her arm, why he won't push for an answer. She thinks about Izumi and Paninya, offering her another option even though they didn't have to. The Elric brothers, coaching her through her recovery. Mei, yelling at her to take it easy. All of them would wait for her decision, whatever it was, and respect it, support it. Her friends.

Lan Fan can fight, with or without full use of her arm. But. After taking Edward Elric on, she thinks that having a metal limb might not be so bad.

"Someday, huh?" Ling stops then, and the red in his face creeps its way up hers. They're back at that stretch of road, she realizes, and the weeds sway around them.

"Maybe." A gust of wind has Lan Fan's hair falling entirely out of the tie, the long strands dancing across her face. Still, she can see the moment all the breath leaves Ling's body, and the touch of his fingers burn as he tucks a few locks behind her ear.

"For whatever nothing it's worth, I'm sorry for what you had to suffer, and for what you will still suffer, because of the gods. Now you have so many choices to choose, and friends to love, and a life to live, and maybe I'm a dick for saying this when everything is finally getting back on track, but I have to." His eyes are so soft. "You barely know me, Lan Fan Sheng. But I'm so very, very glad that I met you. That I know you. That I see you."

Sunlight sparkles on the road. The air moves in ageless circles around them, and somewhere out there Lan Fan can hear waves, laughter, the chime of a bell. The world bursts into bloom. "I was afraid, all this time, of my own life. What I might become. And I'm not anymore, because you're here, and you don't treat me any different despite all of that, and you make me want to be better than I am, right now." Ling's breath catches. So does hers. "But I'm terrified of _you_. Terrified you _do_ know me, terrified you know what I'll ask. Terrified you'll say no. How can I not be, when you're lovely and extraordinary and one life is more time than I deserve? And now that I've met you, and known you, and seen you…I don't ever want to stop."

It's almost sacred, the things he's said. Like a confession. And when her lips turn up, up, up at the corners until she is smiling, wholly and broadly and real, into this new world, Lan Fan thinks the way Ling gazes at her—as though she is something _divine_ —is just as marvelous as any confession should be. "Well. You _are_ a dick, asking for eternity with a girl who barely knows you." She reaches for his hand, and takes it, and the earth spins back into motion. "But you're a dick that is right."

Lan Fan has never been good with words. And yet, she can see in his eyes that this young, beautiful, boy of a god knows her just as much as she knows him, and understands. It's not a promise of forever, when she holds his hand. Not yet. Her friends are here, now, and when she loses them she might always be tied to the earth where they and all her family lie. But forgotten does not mean lost, and lost does not mean forgotten, and the Earth will wink out of existence before Lan Fan will forget her parents, forget Fu. She'll remember them and Paninya and Izumi and Sig no matter where or what or when she is.

 _Maybe someday._ The wind echoes back to them, and Ling's hand squeezes hers.

Yes, she wants to reply, because right now Lan Fan is grinning, and her heart is rising, and she is starting to fall so terrifyingly in love with this god she barely knows.

"You know, Mei will be teasing me every chance she gets. She said this was what you'd say."

"I'll just beat her at judo later." Lan Fan looks at him. "By the way, what is that whole talking-via-wind act?"

Ling is annoyingly smug when he answers. "It's a god thing."

"Poser. I should've suspected you that first day. When you talked to me, everything around me was strange, distorted. The air was frozen, and the colors in the sky were brighter. It was like I was in a whole other realm."

He smiles at her then, earnestly. Reverently. "My power was gone, that day you found me. Whatever you saw or felt or heard…that was all you."

Huh. Maybe she is extraordinary. Lan Fan starts walking again, and the breeze tugs at her hair in silent confirmation. Ling swings their arms between them. "But really. Seeing and hearing things, Lan Fan? Those are symptoms of a lot of worrisome diseases. I know. I looked it up."

"Hey, what's this site called, smartass? How to talk to humans dot com? Do you even know what the Internet is?"

"Yes. I'm not Mei. Incidentally, she told me I should try something called…'pizza'? And whatever the hell a 'boba' is."

"You'll find out soon enough. We're meeting them now." Lan Fan pulls him forward. "Unless she's eaten it all. I am not buying you a whole new pizza just so you can not finish it."

"Stingy." Ling makes a face. "I'm the rising _tiāndì_. There is nothing I can't do."

"You're a terrible liar is what you are." She laughs outright, her chest humming. "Saying you've been so afraid of your own life, back there in that grand speech. You're still afraid. We all are."

"Yes." Tilting his head again, he grins. "And I think I will be, for a long time. But I'm willing to bet you can do something about it, miss Lan Fan."

"Well, all right, then." Ling's hand is warm in hers, and Lan Fan could smile at him for days. It's noon. The sun is as gold as his eyes. "I'll help you."

 **~fin~**

* * *

 **A/N:** This is even longer. And two weeks late. Oh well.

 **TRANSLATIONS:** **  
**Tiāndì = God/Emperor/Ruler of Heaven  
Nǚwā = Mother Goddess, associated with the creation of mankind and mending the world order  
Yánwáng = God of the Underworld  
Guānyīn = Goddess of mercy, the embodiment of compassion  
El Jefe = Spanish for 'the boss'  
Dummkopf = German for 'idiot' or 'fool'  
Eins = German for 'one'  
Zwei = German for 'two'

This whole fic took a while to write, because I wanted to figure out how Lan Fan could grow, and to show how she changes because of what happens to her. Her introspection bits are important to me, because I think some of the thoughts and feelings she has in this fic to fit with those she probably also had in the FMA series, whether she wanted to or not. Lan Fan gives up a lot, in here and in FMA. And while canonically she is bound to Ling as his guard and she is expected to sacrifice so much of herself for him, in this AU I wanted to maintain that whole status dilemma AND let the both of them to be free to pursue all the things they want to, like friendship and trust and love. I am a hopeless romantic. See exhibit A: Ling's super long confession. (Besides, let's not pretend Ling didn't find a way to make Lan Fan his Empress when they got back to Xing. It happened. That boy is in love. Fight me.)  
About the arm: I didn't want to have her immediately get a prosthetic arm, because the main reason she got it in FMA was because she had to protect Ling, and she doesn't have to here. It's also hella expensive, and friends or no, I don't think Lan Fan is comfortable enough yet to accept their discount. And, as stated, she can still fight without a fully functioning arm. But that's just my opinion.  
Lastly, the ending. It really is up to you to decide if Lan Fan will accept Ling's offer of forever with him. I know it kind of leans towards her saying yes, but it's a huge decision to ask of someone you love, regardless of how well you know them. I think it'd take at least a few more decades of a solid, healthy relationship that isn't based on monthly visits before Lan Fan could feel sure enough to agree. And anyway, people change. You never know.

Also on AO3 (my name there is wild_and_free)

Thanks for reading!


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